Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1500189
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 85 MC: It's great when we get to work closely with picture departments, though it's not always possible. When there is a project where we can chat directly with picture editors, there is a nice back-and- forth that happens, sharing ideas and processes that offers different insights to how a film is made. There are times when picture editors need specific material from sound editors to help them shape the edit and sometimes we can pick up on things that they might miss. Something I notice a lot is pacing of things like flashing alarms. If the pace goes out of sync with sound, it's very noticeable and so we can give the editors that feedback to make sure there is an even rhythm. The best experience we have had in terms of workflow with the picture department was when Dave and I were in Canada working on Elysium. Sound and picture were all in the same workspace and we could chat about stuff during lunch. It was such a great creative environment and those people are still very dear friends of ours. How much time do you tend to have for most projects? MC: It varies a lot depending on budget, timeline, and scale of the project. Low-budget New Zealand films might only have six weeks for a single sound designer to work, but a big blockbuster might employ a big crew for a full year. I do love the variety and challenges of each end of the spectrum and how that affects the artistic pace. The important thing is that no matter the budget of a film, we treat every project with the same love, attention, and integrity, giving it our all. Each film is someone's baby that they have been working on for years and we have to honor that, no matter how big or small the director is. DW: There's obviously a budget scale, but I've worked on the nine- month type projects several times. You get a lot of great recording done on those projects which is certainly one of the best parts of the job. Twenty-two and 16 weeks seems to pop up a lot. A New Zealand low-budget film used to have nine weeks' design period and then a 3-4 week mix. Unfortunately, some powers that be have been trying to squeeze the local films to 4-6 weeks' design with a one-week mix! Not cool. What was the most unusual sound editing that you have done for a project? DW: Shell and I started on Chappie, then handed it on as shifting schedules meant we couldn't finish it. We got the VFX limb motion data and made an app to convert it all to MIDI. So our robots' motion and all the servos were triggered by its own data. We made Kontakt patches and it stayed as MIDI right till the end. As it turned out, you can hardly hear a servo in Chappie, but the process was a eureka moment for a while. I've talked many times about District 9, but the micro editing was very finicky and looked like a nightmare to the re-recording mixers, but it was quite simple once they figured out my layout. I thought I was pretty cool using the formants' filter menu in the old version of Metasynth to get Treebeard's FX elements talking. I got 20 elements, from wood creaks and mammals, through to wind in leaves to take on the formants of John Rhys-Davies' Treebeard's voice. I'd process the full line and then audition every processed file listening for happy vocal accidents that enhanced the dialogue. I remember Michael Semanick opening the session and saying, "OMG, what the hell is this!" He soon realised it all worked and though they weighed heavy on John's voice in the end, I knew you could mute his voice and the tree would speak. I was proud of that. Elysium had one of the funniest and coolest sounds I've made. I bought a vibrator and stuck it Michelle with son, Wolf.